Four hospitals to treat cancer, other diseases

It further plans to work with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Atomic Agency (IAA) and the International Cancer Centre Abuja (ICCA) on cancer prevention strategies; to equip additional seven cancer treatment centres with funds from IAA; and to distribute 62 million Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs) before the end of next year in a bid to halve the malaria burden.

Minister of Health, Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin, told The Guardian at the weekend: “…We are proposing in the budget this year to upgrade four teaching hospitals next year. It is not just the same level of upgrading we did before. The level of upgrading we did before was to bring them to a standard comparable to any teaching hospital, but without the issue of specialisation.

“What we are going to do in the next year is to actually begin to get them to specialise in one area or another. So, we are hoping to be able to do cardiovascular disease, renal disease, cancers and all of that. So that we can have these hospitals function at a different level; so there is a clear paradigm shift.”